What about small

I want to bring together a number of separate debates.

Lets start with Seth's Blog: Small is the new big and add The Internet Monk: A Growing and Awkward Silence plus a comment on that at Adrian Warnock's UK Evangelical Blog: Pentecostal and charismatic dialogue.

It is good that Adrian and Michael have found each other and are talking. For myself I connect with some of Michaels frustrations with some Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches and with the way Christianity is portrayed in a number of conservative weblogs.

Adrian is (naturally) quick to defend the Church that he belongs to and indeed I have no experience of it so cannot comment. However, if we look at some of Adrians earlier posts eg CofE, RIP, 'One church a week' faces closure and Are the 'New Church' streams stagnating? we see a consistent assumption echoed by many others that mainstream "traditional" Churches are dying, non scriptural, liberal, non evangelical and in some cases even non Christian.

So why connect this with the "Small is the new big" theme? Well many "traditional" churches in the UK are small (particularly when in rural or semi rural areas). In Methodism we are seeing new hope and life in these Churches (for one set of examples see the case studies in the Building Family Friendly Churches book).

Methodism started in small groups, small groups (classes and bands) have been a critical part of our history as have other factors such as the focus on lay people rather than clergy and our disciplined approach to scripture, prayer and the christian life. It seems that some of these strengths are now being recognised again.

So why am I writing this?

First, I want to plead with Christians like Adrian from other traditions to move on and stop seeing us as their enemy. To stop trying to find formulations of what it means to be a Christian that are narrow and exclude other traditions.

Secondly, I want to ask Christians to be more open to other traditions, more willing to see the good, more willing to be tolerant. It is far easier to breed intolerance than tolerance, but surely the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit encourage tolerance.

Thirdly, I want to encourage Methodists to take back what we stand for. To be positive about our faith, our tradition, our search for Scriptural Holiness, our disciplined response to the grace of God, our rootedness in our local communities. We can do all this without needing to attack those whose faith journey is different. We can do this without needing to believe secular media who have an agenda in their comments about us. Most of all we can only do this in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit as part the "Misio Dei" (Mission of God).

Comments

[John]

we see a consistent assumption echoed by many others that mainstream "traditional" Churches are dying, non scriptural, liberal, non evangelical and in some cases even non Christian.

In America, this view is, in general, accurate. The liberal denominations such as the PCUSA, the ECUSA, and the ABC are shrinking. In the United Methodist Church, it is the conservative conferences which are growing and the liberal conferences which are shrinking.

A lot of theological and moral conservatives like myself are not surprised. Taking a firm stand on issues -- and the Bible in particular -- has a way of motivating people to get out of bed on Sunday mornings that a theological 'whatever' response is unlikely to garner.

We have an absolutist view of truth. We don't have to be obnoxious about it, but should stand up for what we believe, as you should.

[Mike]

Dave:

A week or so ago I wrote a post about the emergent church in which I made a distinction (actually borrowed from J.P. Moreland) between the function of the church and the form of the church. If churches are true to the biblical function (e.g., evangelism, discipleship, worship), the form doesn't matter; if churches are not true to function, well, the form doesn't matter then either.

I appreciate your comments and your irenic spirit. I don't think your words necessarily imply that truth doesn't matter, but only that love does. Even if we disagree, we need to disagree in love.

Although I belong to a relatively big church (3K or so), I think every church needs to function "small": small groups, small home church, small Sunday school classes, small discipleship groups. Small is a good thing.

It should not be lost on us that Jesus, when His following got too big, upped the ante and thinned out the herd in a hurry (Jn 6). I like small.

[Adrian]

Have just intereacted with this over on my blog

[DaveW]

Adrian: Thanks, read your post which I though was gracious and well written.

Mike: I was not familiar with the function/form terminology but it looks ok to me at first glance. Although I don't like the term function very much as it could be taken to imply some form of salvation by works (it is clearly not meant that way but that is what came to my mind when I first saw the term).

Mike: I certainly do believe that truth matters, love is vital, but the love comes from the truth that is God. But I think we try too hard to narrow down truth to tight phrases with very specific meanings - I find God so far beyond my understanding that when I attempt this I run into big problems with language which cannot express the inexpressible. Just consider what we mean by the phrase God is love and you will see what I mean.

John: If you play the numbers game in the UK then it all depends on what time frames you take and what you look at. In UK Methodism there is a wide variety of growth and decline. The greatest declines come from death not theology as we have a very old age profile. I do not think it is simple to analyse where the growth is coming, certainly it is not simplisticly related to liberal/conservative.

John: My impression is that the US is much more rigidly divided geographically, politically, and theologically into 2 camps. What is startling to a Brit is the large degree of relationship between these camps. Ours is a much more complex and varied situation.

John: I don't have a problem with firm stands as long as they are held and practiced in a way compatible with the teachings of Christ.

John: Absolute truth - yep agree with that, but I think that some is said to be absolute truth (by people on all sides) that is problematical, partly due to the nature of ourselves, language and the nature of God. Absolute truth does not mean we need remove all ambiguity, or switch off our brains or obey an authoritive/charismatic church leader in every aspect of our lives - yet we see all of those in some places.

Thanks all.